Labor board OKs challenge to SEIU

[tomm2thumbs]

Source: LA Times

A federal labor board decision this week has given a major victory to a breakaway union vying with the giant Service Employees International Union to represent tens of thousands of California healthcare workers.

On Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board called for elections to determine who has the right to represent some 2,300 Kaiser healthcare workers employed at various sites in Southern California. An SEIU affiliate currently represents the workers, but the breakaway group filed a petition in February challenging the SEIU. The balloting, likely to be held in January, will give employees a chance to choose between the two unions.

The fight pits perhaps the nation's most influential labor leader, Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, against a former subordinate, Sal Rosselli, who broke with Stern in January after the SEIU placed the healthcare local that Rosselli headed in trusteeship, alleging that he and his allies were improperly using dues to finance an insurrection. Each leader has accused the other of being power-hungry. The schism is one of a number of divisions in the labor movement that have given labor's foes ammunition despite the ascendancy of a pro-labor president and Democratic control of Congress.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-union4-2009dec04,0,25176.story

[boppers]

1. I have a friend who worked 80 hour workweeks, with no overtime pay, for the ALF-CIO.

A lot of the bigger unions are simply corporations in disguise.... same game, different masters.

Kind of makes you wonder why they're so interested in consolidating power, when the biggest problem in the movements is a lack of membership in *any* union.

[DissedByBush]

2. The SEIU cares more about itself than the workers

They got too big and greedy. Time for some fresh representation.

[Bette Noir]

3. You got that right.

SEIU are not the good guys.

[Go2Peace]

4. Yep, they are trying to become a political organization and are forgetting their original mission

[mmonk]

5. Ultimately, the struggle is always political.

The nation currently is run by transnational corporations.